Exploring the evolving concept of obscenity, this book delves into the works of 20th-century artists who challenge societal norms around explicit material. Kerstin Mey analyzes figures like Hans Bellmer, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Robert Mapplethorpe, navigating the complexities of art that straddles the line of acceptability. With a nuanced perspective, she critiques the problematic nature of certain pieces while celebrating others as innovative and freeing, emphasizing the subjective nature of our responses to provocative art.
A major monograph presenting more than 200 works from the 35-year career of
Professor Mariele Neudecker, a German-born, Bristol-based multimedia artist
working at the crossover of art and science.
Contemporary cultural practices have blurred and eroded traditional disciplinary boundaries of art and its discourses, and the ways in which they are taught. They have called into question the ideological premises and cultural assumptions on which traditional academic subjects were founded and which have underwritten the segregation between practice, pragmatic and speculative thought. The Scottish Theoros - Forum for Interdisciplinary Debate was jointly initiated by the Department of Philosophy and the School of Fine Art at the University of Dundee to create a space for dialogue between and across the various disciplines that are concerned with the study of visual arts: practice, aesthetics, theory, history and criticism. Theoros has initiated a series of international conferences bringing together professionals who are engaged in the research and teaching of art from different disciplinary perspectives. This volume contains selected contributions to the first Scottish Theoros conference on 'Aesthetics, Historicity and Practice', held in Dundee in 1998. Historicity marks the temporal nature of our existence and experience. It forms a central aspect in the making of and reflection on art. Here historicity is explored as a common ground for the integration of practice, critical thought and historical enquiry in the spaces of higher education and professional engagement.
